As you can see, there was also a bump in discrimination claims after the 2001 recession.

That increase and the increase last year could largely be explained by cyclical factors: many of the people who once might have been reluctant to accuse a company of prejudice because they feared retaliation have now been laid off and therefore have less to lose from filing a claim. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, many people may be claiming discrimination precisely because they are out of a job — that is, they may believe they were improperly targeted for layoff based on their age, sex, race, etc.

Certainly I have found in my own conversations with unemployed people over the last few years that suspicions of discrimination in the hiring and firing process abound.

Most jobless people I’ve spoken with have said the reason they don’t have a job is that they’re being discriminated against. If they’re young, they think employers want someone older and more experienced. If they’re old, they think employers want someone young. If they’re white, they think affirmative-action-obsessed employers want minorities. If they’re minorities, they think employers are biased toward white hires.

I have heard this again and again and again.

Many of the perceived prejudices are of course mutually exclusive (at least from the very same employer), but maybe to some extent a glut of idle workers does make discrimination more salient. After all, employers can afford to be extraordinarily picky about whom they hire, and it is not always predicated on merit.

But my hunch is that there just aren’t enough jobs, period.

The primary problem isn’t that employers are systematically excluding particular demographic groups; the problem is that they’re systematically excluding everyone.

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